12/11/2013

Last night I finished up the half-square triangle zig-zag quilt. I refuse to call it a chevron, because I am so tired of seeing that word everywhere. Every. Where.

You can see bits and pieces of the blue and brown BYU print, which is where I pulled the colors for the fabrics. I'm using it for the backing, but snuck a few pieces of it in the top here and there.

I debated for a very long time whether or not this quilt needed a border. In the end, I decided I liked the edge to edge pattern and am opting out on a border. This decision has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it is was nearly one in the morning and I want to quilt it tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, this is what the fine folks at weather underground say is coming our way tonight and tomorrow. Awesome. I especially like the part about serious threat to life already occurring or imminent. So I've loaded up on firewood, I'm going to make a pot of soup, and hunker down with some more quilting and Gilmore Girls DVD's to keep me company. It should be a productive night. As long as the power stays on.

12/08/2013

Skagway really does it up for Christmas. It's a month long affair, with a winter ball, craft bazaars, the annual quilt show, open houses at local businesses, a gingerbread house contest, movies (this is a big one for us, since we don't have a movie theater)...

...and the Santa Train.

The Santa Train is where it's at for holiday fun. The railroad where I work puts this event on every year, and hundreds of people come from Skagway, Juneau and the Yukon to see Santa arrive on his special "sleigh" and then go for a ride up the snowy pass. The depot is decked out in twinkly lights and fun holiday vignettes, there's cookies and hazelnut hot chocolate, and festive carols that kick around in your head all afternoon. It's my favorite weekend in December.

This year, I went up with the crew in a couple engines the day before as they cleared the tracks of snow and ice. It was a clear morning with frigid temps that stole all thoughts right out of my head. It was a fun adventure, for sure.

The next morning, we decorated the train so Santa could arrive in style.

We got a little sidetracked with the garland...

Santa arrived at the depot to visit the kids (big and small) and passed out goodies and then everyone piled into the cars for the hour ride up the pass. Of course, Santa came along to spread holiday cheer on the train ride. He's such a busy man, but always finds time for us here in Skagway and we're so grateful.

I also got some sewing in. I'm burning the midnight oil trying to finish up some projects before I leave this weekend. Remember that pile of blue and browns I pulled out? Well it's now 252 half-square triangles, which I am sewing into rows to make a zig-zag quilt.

I have ten of the eighteen rows assembled. I guess I should have laid them all out to see them together, but Clifton takes that as an invitation to search and destroy and I hate to encourage the beast. I'll have the brown rows done tonight and then I'll put them all together and load it on the machine and quilt it. Speedy fast! This is the second of three quilts I'm trying to finish before I leave. The red and white star one is ready to be quilted, this zig-zag one is just about there also, and then the third one is just a pile of partially finished blocks right now. It should just take a day to get that one ready to quilt also. That'll be my job Wednesday afternoon. Then I'll quilt them Thursday, attach the binding Thursday night, and hand stitch it down while I'm on the ferry to Juneau. It's a seven hour ride, so I should be able to get some good binding time in. I'm cutting it close, I know. It's been a busy month and I may or may not have bitten off more than I can chew.

12/01/2013

My friend asked me to make her some new Christmas stockings for her family of five. She had a gorgeous decorator-weight Christmas plaid with a coordinating woven burgundy and cream. And tons of fun ribbons for embellishments. We got together in the evenings after her kidlets were in bed dreaming of sugar plums, and got to work. She made the bodies of the stockings while I worked on the cuffs. We didn't have any patterns; just some pictures we found online as ideas. A couple of them were pretty challenging. Particularly the logistics of putting it all together with no seams showing. I think we rocked it!

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday. I had a wonderful time. Excellent company. Fantastic food. And a great post-dinner hike to stave off the pumpkin pie coma.

I love this time of year. All the sparkly decorations. The yummy smells. Friends. Family. Utah.

Yes! I said Utah! I'm headed to my favorite place in the entire world in just two weeks! I can't tell you how excited I am. We already have a board on Pinterest of recipes and crafts we're going to hit while I'm down there. And since it's been about -30 with our wind chills this week, two weeks can't go by fast enough!

11/21/2013

So this summer, I adopted a puppy from our local Paws and Claws animal shelter.

I had no idea what I was in for.

Not. A. Clue.

I've been owned by cats for years. And while I don't consider myself totally inept, my cats have never prepared me for dog-ownership. Wow. Somedays, all I have to say is it's a good thing he's cute.

Clifton is an energetic little black lab that came from Hoonah, AK. His sister is also in town, although we don't know her. Apparently, there was no love lost between the two, cause he never asks about her.

And everything has included an entire three-layer chocolate cake from the kitchen counter, a hairbrush, a pair of underwear, several cubes of butter, entire pieces of firewood, a roll of duct tape, and a flat dead mouse he found in the middle of the street.

He's terrified of trains, which just blows my mind. He's definitely in the wrong family for that and needs to buck up. The first time we took him on the train to go hiking at Laughton Glacier, he wouldn't even climb the stairs. We had to carry him up, and then he just sat under my seat shaking the entire time. Everytime he hears a whistle blow, which is often, he tries to cram himself under the bed or table.

But all his neurotic tendancies aside, he's just a little ball of love. He loves everybody and just wants to be loved. He's such a little snuggler. Night time is cuddle time, and there's nothing he'd rather do than settle in on the couch with his head in my lap, watching me read. We have many fun adventures ahead of us. First up...SNOW!

11/17/2013

Our little quilt group meets once a month for a mini-quilting retreat. We eat good food, work on all sorts of projects, and catch up on the scuttlebutt around town. This weekend, I worked on some lap quilts that will be finding good homes this Christmas.

All those reds I washed and washed are getting put to good use. I am making two lap quilts simultaneously, both using these same reds in 12" Ohio stars, but each with a different border. You can see now, with the miles and miles of white, why I was so concerned about potential bleeding. Even after three washes, I'm still a little nervous. I had picked out two different white-on-white prints, one for each quilt, but somewhere along the line, I made a mistake hunting and gathering and didn't have enough of the snowflake print I started using for this quilt. I had a stack of FQ's, and I think I counted them as half yards. At any rate, after I had eleven of the twelve stars made, I had to substitute in a different white snowflake print, which was a thinner fabric. I hate how it looks right now as a flimsy, but I'm hoping once it's all backed with a snow white batt, the situation will resolve itself. You can really see the difference in fabrics in the sashing.

The snowman border print is an older Benartex piece I've hoarded in my stash for years. It came in both blue and green colorways, and I love that they aren't cartoony. They're just little old fogey snowmen, wrapped up in kicky red scarves, happy as can be. It's the perfect fabric for a grown-up holiday throw. Here's a peek at what others were working on this weekend...

11/07/2013

This is a table runner that Chamaine and I picked charms squares out for a couple years ago. In a giant bin of six-inch charms at Pine Needles Quilting in Gardner Village in Utah. One of my favorite quilt shops. I could have dug through that bin of charms for days. As it is, I came out with quite a good little pile.

A lot of the prints were larger scale, which I hated to slice up. I held on to this little stack for quite a while, trying to come up with something to do with them. Last fall at a quilting retreat, I finally settled on a very simple runner that let the fun prints speak for themselves. The top went together quickly, but it wasn't until just recently that I got the binding finished. It's almost a little I Spy table runner. To keep it from looking too simple and boring, I added some red ric-rac around the border. I think it's fun. And festive.

11/04/2013

I mentioned earlier I had some projects I'm working on for Christmas that are bumping my Halloween Lollipops quilt down a few pegs until after the holidays.

This is a pile of blues and browns I pulled out for a scrappy zig-zag lap quilt. The browns I picked out are really not that putrid, greenish baby-poop color. They match the brown background in the BYU focal fabric really well, actually, but the lighting in my sewing room isn't very friendly to browns at 11:37 at night. It's all half-square triangles, so it's mindless sewing while I catch up on back episodes of Survivor on the CBS app. Seriously, whoever came up with that app wins my love forever.

I'm also working on a red and white project. I love the crisp, clean look of a red and white quilt. Who doesn't? But I lose sleep over the bleeding possibilities. So I picked all my reds and washed them ahead of time. Twice. The first time, I threw in three Color-Catchers and they came out pretty dark.

So I ran them through again with two more sheets. Still pretty dark.

Amazing, isn't it? All that red dye was just waiting to ruin my quilt. Wash and dry, wash and dry. Trim threads and iron. I want to wash and crinkle this quilt before it goes to it's new owner, and I didn't want to take any chances of red ruining the day.

This is what will be taking up my free time in the next few weeks. I'm a "cut-everything-all-at-once" kind of quilter, so that's what I'm working on right now. Cutting out the pieces for three simultaneous quilts. Once I get started putting blocks together, I'll show and tell.

10/30/2013

Alaska is a little behind. We joke that we're about two years behind on current fashions, which really isn't saying much, since I don't think Carhartts and Xtra Tuffs were ever haute couture in the lower 48 to begin with. I've never seen models strutting their stuff in six-inch heeled rubber boots.

Some of us are a bit late on the current events and movie scene. That would be me. I don't watch much TV or movies, and if MSN doesn't deem it newsworthy, I may not always have my finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world either. I'm ok with that. I used to sit and read the news every morning with my bowl of peanut butter Cheerios and a salivating cat, but I had to stop. It was too depressing and I was afraid to walk out my front door.

We are definitely behind the times on the quilting scene. This modern quilt spree that's just starting to be the rage here right now...it's already post-modern for you quilters down south. And don't get me wrong, we have a great quilt shop in town, and in every port up the southeast Alaskan coast, but it's a plane or boat trip away. So what our particular shop chooses to showcase at the moment, is what we consider up and coming. Unless I pore over all the current quilt magazines, or steadily follow popular blogs, I could easily not have a clue what quilters are talking about right now. But in two years, I'll totally be right there with you.

If it weren't for Pinterest and blogging, I would have so missed out on the Lollipops craze that every single quilter I follow on Pinterest has pinned to their board.

This is Lollipops by Fig Tree Quilts. I found these pictures on the Fig Tree blog, where she has a little disclaimer saying you can use her photos for promoting and marketing her products in a shop or blog. Actually, I found them on Pinterest first, which linked me to her blog, where I then went searching for rules and regulations to using her images for praise and adoration. I think confessing undying love constitutes as promoting, right? I hope I'm not breaking any rules.

I love this pattern! And those sweet, mellow terra cotta oranges mixed with warm grays and blacks. So delicious! And get this...I went rooting around in my stash the other day and my Fig Tree collection had much to offer. I culled out these beauties and came up with my own assortment of prints for my own mini-dresdens.

All that was hiding in my stash. Free quilt! I was so exciting after putting this little pile of beauties together, that I wanted to see if my luck would hold out for a Christmas selection, too. Turns out I have a pretty lucky stash of fabrics. It pays to hoard Fig Tree prints for years, afraid to cut into them. I think I might need a few more lighter greens and some green on white prints for the Christmas pile, and I think if I keep digging, I might be able to unearth something that will fit perfectly. Free quilt #2!

Now that the excitement of fabric picking is done and over with, I'm going to put these pretty little piles aside until after the holidays. I have some projects I'm working on for Christmas that are first in line. I am just so excited to have found everything I needed right there in my own sewing room. That makes me feel like a million bucks. And it totally justifies my need for my stash.

10/26/2013

Ok, enough reminiscing. Enough nostalgia. Enough of last year. 2013 is about to close, and I'm still wondering what happened in 2012. Do you ever feel like blocks of time have just disappeared? Fallen off the face of the earth? Like, I can't remember what I did from June through August in 2012. Or 2013, if we're going to be honest. I mean, I KNOW I loaded a bazillion people on half a bazillion trains. I know I answered all the tourist questions, most of them with a smile. I know I made people's dreams come true. (That last one is up for debate, depending on which tourist and which dream.) And I'm not being dirty. But when I look back on the summer - 2012 or 2013 - I can't remember what I did besides all that fun. I'm certain I made cookies on Sunday afternoons. I'm pretty sure I fed my cat on a regular basis, seeing as she's still here. But that's it. The rest is a blank. All that stuff about living in the now and enjoying the moment, I think I took it all to heart so well, that the moment's have now escaped me. I suppose this is a good thing, right? If I were still an avid scrapbooker, I could look back on my pictures and funny little notes written on favorite restaurant napkins, and then the little thought balloon would pop up above my head and I'd slap my palm against my forehead and suddenly remember that there were moments above and beyond those that occurred on the depot's loading platform. Unfortunately, I am only an avid scrapbook paper collector, so instead of nostalgic books of remembrance lining the bottom shelves of my bookcases, I get to thumb through my pretty collection of 12"x12" papers and think to myself "Did I buy this at the cute little scrapbook store in Payson or was it at Joann's in Juneau?" What I do know, amidst all the random and completely useless trivia that hogs the majority of prime real estate in my head, is that during this past summer, or the one before, I did not do any quilting. Oh, I'm pretty sure I bought fabric, which temporarily salved my guilty conscience and made me think that I was quilting, but nope, didn't break the machine out. Not once.

Sad. Sad. Sad.

I used to look at all these gorgeous blogs, and scroll through pages and pages of beautiful quilts and chastise myself for not using my time wisely, or some other cliched reprimand. "Allyson, you have the same 24 hours in a day as anyone else. Prioritize. Focus. Make time." It's not that I'm a time waster. Cause I'm not. Although I can't remember exactly what, I am sure I have very good reasons for my quilting absence. A mountain needed to be climbed, dog needed to be walked (oh yeah, I got a puppy. More on him later. He's really cute!), Canada needed me to come explore their bounty of cute little roads leading nowhere. Trails needed to be walked, lakes needed people to lounge on beach towels on the sandy shores, sometimes the gym called me, but not very often.

And so it is, on one of those long Sunday afternoon drives, with the car full of friends and fresh baked goods, that I decided I am still a quilter. I just took a break. Kind of like I did with my blog. Sometimes I just don't WANT to quilt. Or blog. The two are not always synonymous, but in this case, they seem to go hand in hand. Thank goodness it eventually cycles back around. Otherwise, I could say I'm a lot of things and just not do it. Like I'm a runner, but I just don't feel like running. But nope, I can attest to being a quilter. I still get that rush from running my hands over perfectly stacked piles of fabrics. I still add pins to my Quilty Things board on Pinterest, with the high hopes of someday making all of my favorites. I think I have somewhere around 1800 pins on that board, so that would be a really, REALLY high hope, but hey, a girl can dream.